CHAPTER XXIII.
PROCRASTINATION.
“YOU may say what you like, young Atheling,” said Miss Rivers, “you’ve a very good right to your own opinion; but I’m not a lawyer, nor bound by rule and precedent, mind. This is the middle of March; it comes on in April; we must wait for that; and you’re not up with all your evidence, you dilatory boy.”
“But I might happen to be up with it in a day,” said Charlie, “and at all events an ejectment should be served, and the first step taken in the case without delay.”
“That is all very well,” said the old lady, “but I don’t suppose it would advance the business very much, besides rousing him at once to use every means possible, and perhaps buy off that poor old Serrano, or get hold of Monte. Why did you not look for Monte, young Atheling? The chances are that he was present too?”
“One witness was as much as I could manage,” said Charlie, shrugging his shoulders at the recollection; “but the most important question of all—Louis—I mean—your brother—the heir—”
“My brother—the heir.” Miss Rivers coloured suddenly. It was a different thing thinking of him in private, and hearing him spoken of so. “I tell you he is not the heir, young Atheling; he is Lord Winterbourne: but I will not see him yet, not till the day; it would be a terrible time of suspense for the poor boy.”
“Then, if it is your pleasure, he must go away,” said Charlie, firmly—“he cannot come here to this agitated house of ours without discovering a good deal of the truth; and if he discovered it so, he would have just grounds to complain. If he is not told at once, he ought to have some commission such as I have had, and be sent away.”
Miss Rivers coloured still more, all her liking for Charlie and his family scarcely sufficing to reconcile her to the “sending away” of the young heir, on the same footing as she had sent young Atheling. She hesitated and faltered visibly, seeing reason enough in it, but extremely repugnant. “If you think so,” she said at last, with a slightly averted face, “ah—another time we can speak of that.”
Then came further consultations, and Charlie had to tell his story over bit by bit, and incident by incident, illustrating every point of it by his documents. Miss Anastasia was particularly anxious about the young Englishman whose name was signed with Charlie’s own, in certification of the inscription on the coffin. Miss Anastasia marvelled much whether he belonged to the Hillarys of Lincolnshire, or the Hillarys of Yorkshire, and pursued his shadow through half-a-dozen counties. Charlie was not particularly given to genealogy. He had the young man’s card, with his address at the Albany, and the time of his possible return home. That was quite enough for the matter in hand, and Charlie was very much more concerned about the one link wanting in his evidence—the person who received the children from the care of Leonore the Tyrolese.
As it chanced, in this strange maze of circumstance, the Rector chose this day for one of his visits. He was very much amazed to encounter Miss Anastasia; it struck him evidently as something which needed to be accounted for, for she was known and noted as a dweller at home. She received him at first with a certain triumphant satisfaction, but by-and-by a little confusion appeared even in the looks of Miss Anastasia. She began to glance from the stately young man to the pale face and drooping eyelids of Agnes. She began to see the strange mixture of trouble and hardship in this extraordinary revolution, and her heart was touched for the heir deposed, as well as for the heir discovered. Lionel was “in trouble” himself, after an odd enough fashion. Some one had just instituted an action against him in the ecclesiastical courts touching the furniture of his altar, and the form in which he conducted the services. It was a strange poetic justice to bring this against him now, when he himself had cast off his high-churchism, and was luxuriating in his new freedom. But the Curate grew perfectly inspired under the infliction, and rose to the highest altitude of satisfaction and happiness, declaring this to be the testing-touch of persecution, which constantly distinguishes the true faith. It was on Miss Anastasia’s lips to speak of this, and to ask the young clergyman why he was so long away from home at so critical a juncture, but her heart was touched with compunction. From looking at Lionel, she turned suddenly to Agnes, and asked, with a strange abruptness, a question which had no connection with the previous conversation—“That little book of yours, Agnes Atheling, that you sent to me, what do you mean by that story, child?—eh?—what put that into your idle little brain? It is not like fiction; it is quite as strange and out of the way as if it had been life.”
Involuntarily Agnes lifted her heavy eyelids, and cast a shy look of distress and sympathy upon the unconscious Rector, who never missed any look of hers, but could not tell what this meant. “I do not know,” said Agnes; but the question did not wake the shadow of a smile upon her face—it rather made her resentful. She thought it cruel of Miss Anastasia, now that all doubt was over, and Lionel was certainly disinherited. Disinherited!—he had never possessed anything actual, and nothing was taken from him; whereas Louis had been defrauded of his rights all his life; but Agnes instinctively took the part of the present sufferer—the unwitting sufferer, who suspected no evil.
But the Rector was startled in his turn by the question of Miss Anastasia. It revived in his own mind the momentary conviction of reality with which he had read the little book. When Miss Anastasia turned away for a moment, he addressed Agnes quietly aside, making a kind of appeal. “Had you, then, a real foundation—is it a true tale?” he said, looking at her with a little anxiety. She glanced up at him again, with her eyes so full of distress, anxiety, warning—then looked down with a visible paleness and trembling, faltered very much in her answer, and at last only said, expressing herself with difficulty, “It is not all real—only something like a story I have heard.”
But Agnes could not bear his inquiring look; she hastily withdrew to the other side of the room, eager to be out of reach of the eyes which followed her everywhere. For his part, Lionel’s first idea was of some distress of hers, which he instinctively claimed the right to soothe; but the thing remained in his mind, and gave him a certain vague uneasiness; he read the book over again when he went home, to make it out if he could, but fell so soon into thought of the writer, and consideration of that sweet youthful voice of hers, that there was no coming to any light in the matter. He not only gave it up, but forgot it again, only marvelling what was the mystery which looked so sorrowful and so bright out of Agnes Atheling’s eyes.
They all waited with some little apprehension that night for the visit of Louis. He was very late; the evening wore away, and Miss Anastasia had long ago departed, taking with her, to the satisfaction of every one, the voluble Tyrolese; but Louis was not to be seen nor heard of. Very late, as they were all preparing for rest, some one came to the door. The knock raised a sudden colour on the cheeks of Marian, which had grown very pale for an hour or two. But it was not Louis; it was, however, a note from him, which Marian ran up-stairs to read. She came down again a moment after, with a pale face, painfully keeping in two big tears. “Oh, mamma, he has gone away,” said Marian. She did not want to cry, and it was impossible to speak without crying; and yet she did not like to confide to any one the lover’s letter. At last the tears fell, and Marian found her voice. He had just heard suddenly something very important, had seen Mr Foggo about it, and had hurried off to the country; he would not be detained long, he was sure; he had not a moment to explain anything, but would write whenever he got there. “He does not even say where,” said Marian, sadly; and Rachel came close up to her, and cried without any restraint, as Marian very much wished, but did not quite like to do before her father and her brother. Mrs Atheling took them both into a corner, and scolded them after a fashion she had. “My dears, do you think you cannot trust Louis?” said Mamma—“nonsense!—we shall hear to-morrow morning. Why, he has spoken to Mr Foggo, and you may be quite sure everything is right, and that it was the most sensible thing he could do.”
But it was very odd certainly, not at all explainable, and withal the most seasonable thing in the world. “I should think it quite a providence,” said Mrs Atheling, “if we only heard where he was.”